Zhou Sicheng’s tongue was far better at executing his master’s explicit will than his lower half.

He possessed an undeniable dedication to customer service. Once he was finished, he even thoughtfully pulled the blanket over Xiang Zhen to cover the disheveled mess on his lower body.

“Keep playing with your phone,” Zhou Sicheng murmured. His lips were a flushed red, and the bridge of his tall, elegant nose was glinting with a fine sheen of sweat. He pinched Xiang Zhen’s cheek, which was flushed red all the way to the corners of his eyes, before stepping out of bed and heading straight for the bathroom.

His departure looked composed, but in reality, the arrow was drawn tight on the bowstring—he didn’t even have time to change the bedsheet for Xiang Zhen first.

Xiang Zhen lay there with his damp, trembling legs spread, his body still far too soft and pliable to draw them back together properly.

Almost as if retaliating against Xiang Zhen for leaving the audio on speaker, Zhou Sicheng hadn’t paid any attention to the phone resting nearby the entire time. Left utterly thoroughly drained, Xiang Zhen ended up listening to Sister Wang’s video channel repeat automatically ten times in a row.

Every single time the synthesized text-to-speech voice reiterated the title, “What to do if your husband’s sex drive drops during pregnancy,” Zhou Sicheng would take a light bite out of the tender flesh on his inner thigh.

Xiang Zhen was driven entirely out of his mind.

Xiang Zhen slowly rolled onto his side, reaching down to stroke the faint, almost non-existent teeth marks. Flustered and exasperated, he immediately unfollowed Sister Wang.

What Sister Wang said didn’t fit the reality of his marriage with his husband at all. Sister Li was much more reliable after all.

A long time passed, and Zhou Sicheng still hadn’t come out of the bathroom. Xiang Zhen dragged his soft, unsteady legs up on his own. He didn’t know where his clothes were folded—Zhou Sicheng always prepared them for him every time—so he had no choice but to head into the walk-in closet and pick out one of his husband’s dress shirts.

Zhou Sicheng’s collection of dress shirts had suddenly grown surprisingly colorful. Xiang Zhen picked out a crisp white one, then bent down to pull open drawers all over the place, looking for fresh bedsheets.

He managed to find a set and dutifully changed the bedsheets himself.

When Zhou Sicheng finally emerged, the entire four-piece bedding set on the bed was brand new. “Next time, wait for me to change it.”

Xiang Zhen countered, “You’re too slow.”

Zhou Sicheng stroked his face softly. “My wife even knows how to do housework. How adorable.”

Xiang Zhen glared at him. “I know how to wash vegetables, too!”

Zhou Sicheng teased, “Think back to how long it’s been since you last washed any.”

Xiang Zhen thought about it. It was true that Zhou Sicheng had taken over all the cooking duties recently. “I’ll wash them next time.”

Zhou Sicheng scooped him up, seating him face-to-face on his lap, and said with absolute solemnity, “Zhenzhen, regarding the parts of the truth I concealed from you during our blind date, I officially apologize to you.”

“I’m sorry. I was too arrogant.”

Xiang Zhen replied, “Hubby, I forgive you.”

A flash of profound sorrow flickered deep in Zhou Sicheng’s eyes, though he kept it hidden for the moment. “When you asked about my family background, I didn’t tell you that my parents were no longer around.”

“When Fan Hao came to talk to you last time, I deliberately let him make me sound pitiful.”

Xiang Zhen felt his nose prickle slightly with emotion. Resting his chin on his husband’s shoulder, he murmured, “Hubby, actually, I lied to you too.”

“My parents are gone too. Auntie Guihua isn’t related to me by blood at all.”

Blood rushed straight to Zhou Sicheng’s head. What does “not related by blood” mean?! He had just laid his heart completely bare, only for Xiang Zhen to drop such a massive bombshell on him!

In truth, both he and Shen Ku had long harbored doubts regarding the blood relations of this family. What kind of three-person family had three completely different hair colors?! Li Guihua had black hair!

Xiang Zhen had a lineage mixed with North American heritage, boasting natural golden hair. But what about Dou Manning? Naturally light curly brown hair—where on earth did that come from?! Where did these hair color genes originate from? Was their ancestry a calico cat?!

If doing a paternity test hadn’t been so impolite, Zhou Sicheng would have done one long ago.

Zhou Sicheng asked, “How did your parents pass away?”

Xiang Zhen blinked. “They passed away of old age naturally.”

Zhou Sicheng rubbed the bridge of his nose. Given that average human life expectancy exceeded seventy, how on earth could Xiang Zhen losing both parents at barely twenty years old be called “passing away of old age naturally”?

Wait… could there be a congenital genetic disease?

That guess made Zhou Sicheng deeply uncomfortable. Yet, given how extraordinary Xiang Zhen’s ability to carry a child was, he lived in absolute terror that there might be other unexpected flaws in his genetic chain.

“Baby, let’s go get a blood test tomorrow, okay? Just one single tube.”

Xiang Zhen pressed his lips together. How had the topic circled back to drawing blood again? “No.”

Zhou Sicheng pressed on, “Are you and Dou Manning not biological brothers?”

Xiang Zhen nodded. “We’re closer than biological brothers.”

Zhou Sicheng questioned, “Then what does whether he can get pregnant have anything to do with you? Why do you have to wait for him to get pregnant first? Is he even certain he can?”

Xiang Zhen stated with pride, “Only boys who can get pregnant are qualified to be Auntie Guihua’s children!”

Zhou Sicheng’s brow furrowed tightly. That sounded suspiciously like some underground genetic modification ring.

He really needed to pull out all the stops to investigate Li Guihua thoroughly.

Unbuttoning a button on his shirt, Zhou Sicheng reached his hand inside to stroke Xiang Zhen’s belly.

Xiang Zhen asked, “Hubby, can you pick a name for the baby?”

Zhou Sicheng looked at him. “You really love children?”

Xiang Zhen answered, “Because this is our child—yours and mine.”

His child with his husband was a sunflower seed baby. Without his husband, at most he could only produce delicious sunflower seeds—just like his leaves, nothing particularly special.

Looking at the expectant gleam in Xiang Zhen’s eyes, Zhou Sicheng realized crystal clear that terminating the pregnancy was fundamentally impossible—unless he wanted to push his wife away once again.

He could never do something so foolish as making Xiang Zhen run away with his child a second time.

“I hope the baby is as cute as you,” Zhou Sicheng said as he stared at Xiang Zhen’s lower abdomen, a thread of strictness revealing itself in his voice.

Xiang Zhen picked up on it instantly, scronching up his face as he looked at his husband. “Hubby, you won’t spank the baby, will you?”

Zhou Sicheng felt no obligation to hide the truth: “I will.”

Xiang Zhen gasped. “I know the baby is putting you through a lot, but the baby didn’t mean to. It has nothing to do with the baby—it’s all my fault.”

Hearing his wife defend their unborn biological child just as fiercely as he defended that unfilial Little Sunflower robot, Zhou Sicheng found it somewhat amusing. Xiang Zhen always took the blame onto himself, but his instincts from fighting with Little Sunflower told him the blame lay squarely with the unfilial child.

Zhou Sicheng straightened his face: “The moment the baby is born, I’m spanking its bottom. And when the baby grows up, I’m cutting off its financial support.”

Xiang Zhen cradled his belly with concern, opening his mouth to persuade him out of it. But then he suddenly remembered his husband driving that massive haul truck, weathered by wind and sun—the desolate figure of Zhou Sicheng standing dazed before the missing person poster on the construction site. That silhouette had truly looked so heartbreaking.

If the baby’s bottom gets spanked, then so be it, Xiang Zhen whispered softly. “What does cutting off financial support mean?”

Zhou Sicheng explained, “It means as soon as the child graduates from university, they have to fend for themselves.”

Xiang Zhen fell into deep thought. “What if the baby can’t get into university?”

Zhou Sicheng had never considered that possibility before and was completely stumped by the question.

Xiang Zhen, however, figured it out a step ahead: “Hubby, you can just leave the BYD car to the baby. The baby can drive for a ride-hailing app, taking over the family business.”

And Lord Sunflower would start saving money from today onward to subsidize a little of the seed baby’s rent. That way, with a job and a place to live, the baby would be a useful member of society—that would be more than enough.

Zhou Sicheng: “…”

Xiang Zhen added generously, “I’ve never been educated, yet I can still earn money and even successfully found a husband. Our baby will do just fine.”

Found a what???

Zhou Sicheng instantly changed his mind: “I will do everything in my power to elevate our child.”

With that, Zhou Sicheng immediately began making arrangements: “Before your bump starts showing, I’ll host a banquet to introduce you to the group’s senior executives and my friends, alright? You can invite your friends over too, and we’ll hold an engagement ceremony.”

Xiang Zhen nodded. “Okay.”

He had long wanted to introduce his husband to his friends.

Although Yueyue and the others already knew him, they hadn’t sat down to have a proper meal together yet.

Zhou Sicheng added, “Invite your mother-in-law over as well.”

Once she was on his home turf, he was going to pry some honest truth out of Li Guihua’s mouth no matter what.

Xiang Zhen said, “Then give her a call and ask.”

However, Li Guihua accurately sensed that this was a trap of a feast and refused to go under any circumstances.

Li Guihua wasn’t afraid of being investigated; back in the day, Honeysuckle and Money Leopard had left behind a complete set of spirit protection regulations. No matter how powerful Zhou Sicheng was, unless Dou Manning accidentally exposed his ID card, there was no way to trace the connections between spirits through the system.

Zhou Sicheng felt the sheer stubbornness of this family even more acutely.

The next day, Xiang Zhen made phone calls one by one to invite his friends to the engagement banquet.

Finally, he called Dou Manning, feeling a bit troubled as he said, “Manning, I don’t want to keep hiding it from Hubby anymore.”

Zhou Sicheng seemed to have developed trauma-induced stress. He would wake up after sleeping for just a little while at night, quietly staring at him while keeping watch through the night.

How could Xiang Zhen fail to notice his bed partner’s state of mind?

Zhou Sicheng was terrified that he might vanish again, terrified of whether the baby would be born smoothly.

Only by explaining the reasons clearly to him could Zhou Sicheng truly put his mind at ease and get a good night’s sleep.

If the sun didn’t set, it couldn’t rise bright and full of energy the next day.

Xiang Zhen made up his mind: “Tomorrow after the engagement banquet, I’m going to confess everything.”

Since he and Zhou Sicheng were engaged in the traditional sense, they were family now. He couldn’t keep things from his husband anymore.

Xiang Zhen added, “I’ll try my best not to drag you into it.”

Dou Manning replied, “I’m fine with it; you can say whatever you want, but it’s best not to reveal your true form.”

Accepting that one’s wife was a spirit was entirely different from seeing with one’s own eyes that one’s wife was a literal sunflower. The shock factor was on two completely different levels—a point heavily emphasized in the Adult Guide written by Bai Qi.

Dou Manning added, “Besides, I plan to confess to Shen Ku anyway.”

Xiang Zhen asked, “You’re going to tell him too?”

Dou Manning said solemnly, “Because I saw him book an appointment with andrology.”

Xiang Zhen wondered aloud, “Is it because his sperm quality isn’t good, so you can’t get pregnant? Zhou Sicheng mentioned introducing a TCM doctor to him.”

Dou Manning: “No, he’s going to get a vasectomy, and he hasn’t been sleeping with me lately.”

Xiang Zhen gasped, hanging up the phone in a daze.

Judging from Shen Ku’s extreme reaction, Zhou Sicheng was likely feeling even more anxious deep down.

That night, Xiang Zhen hugged his husband’s waist and secretly transferred a tiny bit of solar power to Zhou Sicheng, allowing him to restore his energy even if he couldn’t sleep.

Zhou Sicheng’s villa itself could serve as a banquet hall, but in the past, he had never hosted guests here—except for Fan Hao, who dropped by uninvited.

Business friends were entertained at business venues, and as for private friends, Zhou Sicheng didn’t particularly care to host gatherings.

Over all these years, aside from Zhou Qingyun’s big milestone birthday, the thinly populated Zhou family hadn’t celebrated a single joyous occasion.

Zhou Sicheng’s engagement banquet could be considered the very first joyous event.

The housekeeper took charge of the decorations, transforming the villa overnight.

Unable to sleep, Zhou Sicheng simply went downstairs in the middle of the night to supervise personally, inspecting the kitchen’s food prep.

In the past, he didn’t understand the kitchen, but now he was plenty experienced.

His gaze lingered on the fruit and dessert menu. He wanted to cross them off to avoid tempting his wife, but then he remembered Xiang Zhen’s aggrieved little face while eating recently.

Forget it, shouldn’t he let his wife be happy at his own engagement banquet?

The sky turned faintly bright.

Zhou Sicheng called Zhou Qingyun, who was accustomed to rising early: “Grandpa, I’m getting engaged today. I sincerely invite you to grace us with your presence.”

Zhou Qingyun couldn’t see a shred of sincerity: “You complete bastard!”

Zhou Sicheng replied, “I’m very sorry, it was a last-minute decision on my part as well.”

“If you’re in a good mood, please come. If you’re going to keep a stern face, you don’t need to bother, lest you scare my wife.”

Zhou Qingyun was completely out of options regarding his grandson falling head over heels for a guy, especially after Zhou Sicheng had uselessly gone off to drive a heavy haul truck for a whole month.

“Aren’t you head over heels in love? Why is the engagement banquet so rushed?”

Zhou Sicheng let out a light laugh. “You’ll understand in the future.”

He was completely unable to predict the growth rate of the fetus in Xiang Zhen’s belly, so the sooner, the better.

Hanging up the phone, Zhou Sicheng instructed Ye Yun and Shi Ting to stay by Zhou Qingyun’s side at all times. If Zhou Qingyun showed the slightest sign of a bad mood, they were to escort him away to rest immediately.

The banquet was scheduled for the evening. Zhou Sicheng invited only thirty-four senior executives who had attended the coffee gathering last time, along with nine personal friends. His primary goal was to let the group’s executives recognize Xiang Zhen—after all, Xiang Zhen was soon to become one of Zhoufu’s shareholders.

A few close confidants had reservations about Zhou Sicheng transferring equity, given that they lacked a marriage certificate, making it difficult to guarantee they were truly a single unit; Zhou Sicheng stood to lose absolute control over Zhoufu.

Plenty of CEOs drafted prenuptial agreements to guard against their partners, or paid out cash instead.

Zhou Sicheng was too lazy to explain. “You’ll understand once you see my wife.”

What use was a marriage certificate? His wife loved him deeply.

Xiang Zhen wasn’t very familiar with his bank colleagues yet, so he didn’t invite them, choosing instead to invite Yu Yueyue, Liu Xiaofang, and Sun Youzhi.

Yu Yueyue arrived exceptionally early: “Why didn’t you invite the other colleagues? Let them all know that you’re Zhou Sicheng’s wife! You’re a whole rank higher than Fan Hao!”

Xiang Zhen reasoned, “Didn’t people online say not to send invitations to unfamiliar colleagues? It just wastes a whole month’s salary on gift money.”

Even though Xiang Zhen had no intention of collecting money.

Yu Yueyue countered, “That’s different! Come on, this is coming to Zhou Sicheng’s house for a feast! Spending five hundred bucks is more than worth it, okay?!”

The return gift taken home alone would be worth five thousand.

Xiang Zhen smiled, “Yueyue, then make sure to eat more today!”

Yu Yueyue cheered, “Alright! Zhenzhen, you go greet the others, I’m heading in to eat!”

Sun Youzhi presented a congratulatory gift. He finally understood why Feng Chujun had gone bankrupt so quickly, and why he himself had received such a sudden promotion.

It was all because of this handsome, wealthy President Zhou right in front of him.

He never could have imagined that the husband Xiang Zhen constantly talked about was Zhou Sicheng.

“Thank you, President Zhou. I will definitely work hard,” Sun Youzhi said as he shook hands with Zhou Sicheng, who was now also a shareholder of Nut Company.

Zhou Sicheng replied politely, “You’re too kind. Thank you for taking care of Zhenzhen at the company.”

Sun Youzhi answered, “It’s only right. I brought him out from his hometown, so I have to be responsible.”

Fan Hao coughed twice. “President Zhou, I took very good care of Xiang Zhen at the company too.”

Zhou Sicheng retorted, “Didn’t you just voluntarily join in to watch the drama?”

Dou Manning and Shen Ku arrived. Today, Shen Ku was wearing a rare suit.

Fan Hao naturally extended a hand: “Oh, Second Young Master Shen, what new project are you busy with lately?”

Did he need to apply for a loan?

Shen Ku replied, “Not busy.”

Fan Hao shifted his gaze and saw Shen Ku holding hands with a beauty—the very one selling coffee on the construction site.

Xiang Zhen beamed: “Manning, you’re here! Your outfit today is so pretty!”

“Shen Ku bought it for me. Yours looks great too,” Dou Manning said.

Xiang Zhen remarked, “Manager Fan, thank you for taking me to the construction site, otherwise I wouldn’t have run into Manning.”

Fan Hao replied, “You’re welcome. You would’ve met Second Young Master Shen’s wife sooner or later anyway.”

A black sedan pulled up, and two people stepped out.

Fan Hao introduced them to Xiang Zhen: “That’s Chu Ren, President of Changsheng Media. Last time Feng Chujun threatened you, he helped your husband set a trap to bankrupt Feng Chujun.”

“The one beside him is his wife, Bai Qi. He rarely shows his face; I’ve hardly seen him a few times.”

Zhou Sicheng held Xiang Zhen’s left hand, introducing, “President Chu, this is my spouse, Xiang Zhen.”

Chu Ren greeted, “Hello, Mr. Xiang. I am Chu Ren, and this is my spouse, Bai Qi.”

Bai Qi lazily raised his eyes.

Xiang Zhen gasped softly: “Mm!”

The three little spirits met completely unexpectedly just like that.

Bai Qi had a somewhat cool, aloof appearance, fitting Xiang Zhen’s imagination of a snake spirit perfectly.

However, with so many people around, it was hard to acknowledge each other openly, so they could only pretend to hit it off at first sight.

Three couples sat on the circular sofa. Fan Hao looked around and made a mournful discovery: this seemed to be a spouse diplomacy gathering.

Zhou Sicheng and Shen Ku found the scene vaguely familiar, instinctively putting their guard up.

Xiang Zhen asked Bai Qi with curving, bright eyes, “Your husband is the President of Changsheng Media? All the dramas I like were produced by Changsheng Media! The very first frame shows your company’s name!”

Bai Qi answered, “He’s mainly in the film and television industry.”

Xiang Zhen said with admiration, “Then do you get to watch all the dramas without buying a VIP membership?”

Bai Qi froze for a moment. “Yes, I get to watch the early cuts beforehand.”

Xiang Zhen’s envy deepened: “I don’t have a membership, so I can only watch the first episode.”

In an instant, Zhou Sicheng became the focal point among the CEOs.

Everyone’s eyes were filled with silent accusation:

[Do you not even have the money to buy your wife a VIP membership?]

Zhou Sicheng: “…”